Alarm correlation is a conceptual interpretation of multiple alarms such that new meanings are assigned to these alarms. It is a generic process that underlies different network management tasks. Alarm correlation may be used for network fault isolation and diagnosis, selecting corrective actions, proactive maintenance, and trend analysis.
Subjects for correlation could be any events affecting the network. These may be environmental state parameters, the network management context, or events invoked by the user or external systems. Correlations may be defined over a time interval or window.